Eliza Cichonski, Product & UX Leader

The problem

College readiness can be really hard to track, especially at a district level. The data may be there, but it’s often located in disparate locations. 

This project sought to visualize hard-to-obtain data in a digestible way to help district-level officials understand how prepared diverse populations of students may be for college.

Interviews

We started by getting to the bottom of the issue. We held interviews with district-level decision makers across the country to understand what indicators are most important to determining whether students are on track to graduate, and ultimately, attend college.

We asked a range of questions, including:

• What are the success factors on their minds?
• What are they doing now? What's working and what's not?
• How can we help district-level administrators intervene as necessary, and ultimately help more students be successful?

I'll be honest, after hearing from these stakeholders and getting into the classrooms to see the students that could be impacted, this project ended up being very near and dear to my heart. I saw the far-reaching ripple-effect that this project could have if done right. (No pressure...ha!)

Dashboard Best Practices

I figured what better way to get in the mood for dashboard design than to learn from one of the leading experts in the field? I attended a workshop led by statistician and data visualization master Edward Tufte to understand the best practices behind great dashboards.

I learned that a great dashboard must be clear and stripped down to the main goals. Everything from thinking about the signals, design, and legend became clear, and helped tremendously when I got to the design phase.

Iterative Design

With main goals in hand, and best practices in my pocket, I got to work sketching on paper different dashboard designs. I kept our interviews in mind and designed with the passion of knowing that what I designed could potentially help many educators and students.

In order to take the designs even further, I began learning about the backend — we were using a third party company, called Birst, to help manage the data and build out the dashboards. I attended a learning session to understand what would (and would not) be possible, which I knew would only make my designs better. 

Before we could get these dashboards set up in the third-party tool, we needed to iron out the details. I worked in Sketch to design the look and feel of the dashboard. I pulled from our living style guide to determine visual design, while negotiating the constraints of the legacy code base that these dashboards would need to live within.

Circling back with stakeholders

With mockups ready, I conducted usability tests with stakeholders to understand how the dashboards lined up with end user expectations. The result? People were hungry for this, and only wanted more. From this new knowledge, we decided to add on a Premium offering, which could better help the larger districts that wanted more advanced filters and were equipped for strategically implementing change. It was a solid business move that could easily be accommodated within the scalable designs.

Looking Ahead

This feature officially rolled out in April 2018. It was met with great excitement, and I hope that it helps many districts, schools, staff, and most importantly, students, moving forward.